Described herein is a method for coupling an operating state of a motor vehicle to a respective operating state of at least one vehicle-external apparatus. The method can be performed by a server device that may be configured as a server for the Internet, for example. Also described herein is the server device and a motor vehicle that can be coupled to the at least one vehicle-external apparatus via the server device.
In a motor vehicle, the knowledge of vehicle-external states of the surroundings is extremely dependent on sensors around the motor vehicle capturing these states. This is possible only during driving and only in a limited sphere, however. In a motor vehicle, it is not possible today, for example, to tell what temperature the driver currently feels when he is still in his living room. Therefore, it is also not possible to react thereto within the motor vehicle. Changing the operating state of the motor vehicle, for example adapting the air conditioning to suit the temperature the driver currently feels, always requires a report or a trigger command to be explicitly sent to the motor vehicle. To this end, a remote control may be provided, for example, by which the vehicle heater of the motor vehicle can be switched on by the driver.
In the other direction too, however, that is to say from the motor vehicle, there is no automated integration into the surroundings. This can be quite useful, however, in order to notify the family when the driver is on his way home in the motor vehicle, for example. A vehicle cannot change a state of an appliance or an apparatus outside the motor vehicle on the basis of its own operating state, for example its own current geoposition, however.
The driver thus normally needs to actively instigate an independent action in order to control the operating state of the motor vehicle. The other way around, he normally also needs to actively communicate a desire to transmit a message from the motor vehicle to a vehicle-external apparatus.
German Patent Application Publication 10 2004 014 262 A1 describes an alarm clock that automatically sets the wakeup time on the basis of whether or not windows in the motor vehicle are frozen.
German Patent Application Publication 10 2011 106 357 A1 describes a method in which an operating state of the motor vehicle is set on the basis of calendar data from a personal calendar of a user. The calendar data are received via a radio link.
German Patent Application Publication 10 2010 009 760 A1 describes a motor vehicle that reacts to objects in the surroundings by virtue of the objects each having a transponder provided on them that transmits a piece of type information relating to the object as a radio signal. The radio signal is then received by the motor vehicle and used to configure the motor vehicle.